History YMMV / VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun

* WinBackTheCrowd: Patch 1.5 in general, and especially the 1.5.10 fix to it, is seen as this for ''Victoria III''. With the ironing out of bugs and the introduction of local prices, reverse sways and reducing autonomy[[note]]which makes protectorates useful by changing them to dominions[[/note]] and reworking the [[BrokenBase base-breaking]] military system, general consensus is that this is the patch which the game should have launched with. And around the time 1.5 was delivered, foreign investments were announced to get a return from ''II'', addressing another common complaint.

* CheeseStrategy: While not an outright GameBreaker, in ''III'' Agrarianism (both the tech and the economic reform) has two modes: roleplaying a specific political mindset as everyone on the planet... or an all-powerful tool for reforming China and building its economy. Since China starts with an absolutely enormous population, and almost all of it are peasants, this causes Aristocrats to get a cut of profits from farms that aren't actually built... and Agrarianism increases Aristocrats' contribution to the investment pool. And since this is a law that both Rural Folk and Land Owners support, it allows to easily and freely drop the highly restrictive Traditionalism, which in turn allows to switch various other laws, especially the taxation. Passing Agrarianism makes both interest groups happy, with both offering their bonuses ''and'' option to pass laws they ''don't'' like without a revolution. On top of that (and what makes it really cheesy), while the related economic law restricts the investment pool to be used only for agriculture-related structures, ''the reserve built this way is "inheritable" when the law is changed''. So a decade or so under Agrarianism allows China to build up its agricultural output (and further increase profits by increasing the amount of actual farms, the number of farmers and normally useless Aristocrats) and save a pretty penny to then be just used when switching to much more useful Interventionism. The only thing preventing all of this from being a GameBreaker on top of the benefits is the abysmal opening situation of China, so going for Agrarianism lessens the EarlyGameHell, rather than win the game.

* TheScrappy: The Land Owner interest group in 3. They start out very powerful in many major countries such as Russia and Japan and they tend to be in favor of very inconvenient and conservative laws and tend to resist attempts to liberalize or enact laws that help develop the economy in a meaningful way, leading them to be very hated among the playerbase and most players will spend much of the earlygame trying to reduce the clout of the landowners so they can properly develop their country. While it is possible to curtail their influence, it takes a ''lot'' of effort and time, while it might easily spiral into either an unpredictable revolution or, much worse, sending your country down some ''other'' undesirable path.
** ReplacementScrappy: To make matters worse, the usual outcome of trying to curtail powerful Land Owners is elevating Rural Folk, who are nearly just as bad, and while they won't mind ''slightly'' more liberal laws, they can easily turn into an EvilLuddite force that will make building industrial buildings either extra hard or outright impossible, locking your country in a cycle of agrarian economy that changes hands between Land Owners and Rural Folks. And if you have political parties allowed, both groups can form an ultra-conservative agrarian party, which will ''keep electing itself'' to power or requiring to bow to their whims due to their share in the popular support, essentially locking the player in a vicious cycle.

* CheeseStrategy: While not an outright GameBreaker, in ''III'' Agrarianism (both the tech and the economic reform) has two modes: roleplaying a specific political mindset as everyone on the planet... or an all-powerful tool for reforming China and building its economy. Since China starts with an absolutely enormous population, and almost all of it are peasants, this causes Aristocrats to get a cut of profits from farms that aren't actually built... and Agrarianism increases Aristocrats' contribution to the investment pool. And since this is a law that both Rural Folk and Land Owners support, it allows to easily and freely drop the highly restrictive Traditionalism, which in turn allows to switch various other laws, especially the taxation. Passing Agrarianism makes both interest groups happy, with both offers their bonuses ''and'' option to pass laws they ''don't'' like without a revolution. On top of that (and what makes it really cheesy), while the related economic law restricts the investment pool to be used only for agriculture-related structures, ''the reserve built this way is "inheritable" when the law is changed''. So a decade or so under Agrarianism allows China to build up its agricultural output (and further increase profits by increasing the amount of actual farms, the number of farmers and normally useless Aristocrats) and save a pretty penny to then be just used when switching to much more useful Interventionism. The only thing preventing all of this from being a GameBreaker on top of the benefits is the abysmal opening situation of China, so going for Agrarianism lessens the EarlyGameHell, rather than win the game.

* CheeseStrategy: While not an outright GameBreaker, in ''III'' Agrarianism (both the tech and the economic reform) has two modes: roleplaying a specific political mindset as everyone on the planet... or an all-powerful tool for reforming China and building its economy. Since China starts with an absolutely enormous population, and almost all of it are peasants, this causes Aristocrats to get a cut of profits from farms that aren't actually built... and Agrarianism increases Aristocrats' contribution to the investment pool. And since this is a law that both Rural Folk and Land Owners support, it allows to easily and freely drop the highly restrictive Traditionalism, which in turn allows to switch various other laws, especially the taxation. Passing Agrarianism makes both interest groups happy, which both offers their bonuses ''and'' option to pass laws they ''don't'' like without a revolution. On top of that (and what makes it really cheesy), while the related economic law restricts the investment pool to be used only for agriculture-related structures, ''the reserve built this way is "inheritable" when the law is changed''. So a decade or so under Agrarianism allows China to build up its agricultural output (and further increase profits by increasing the amount of actual farms, the number of farmers and normally useless Aristocrats) and save a pretty penny to then be just used when switching to much more useful Interventionism. The only thing preventing all of this from being a GameBreaker on top of the benefits is the abysmal opening situation of China, so going for Agrarianism lessens the EarlyGameHell, rather than win the game.

* AnnoyingVideoGameHelper: Capitalist [=POPs=] under State Capitalism are pretty much useless since the player has enough control of the system to build what's needed, where it's needed, and when it's needed. Doesn't prevent the AI from constantly "helping" by setting up useless factories now and then, usually in the worst spot imaginable. Factories that player doesn't really need and yet still get priority on the market for resources, slowing down the construction of things ''you'' ordered to be built. And all of that is constantly cluttering the UI. By late game, Planned Economy is often the desired economy policy. Not due to being superior in any way, but because capitalists aren't allowed to build anything under it and thus players don't have to stop the construction of 20 different factories each week. And if you are running either Interventionism or (God forbid) Laissez-faire early on, you can expect capitalists building the most useless factories in the most inconvenient spots all the time and you can't do ''anything'' about it - including closing down and destroying those factories until they outright go bankrupt, angering workers inside and making them leave your country for greener pastures. Even if you put a national focus on a specific state, it doesn't guarantee a factory is going to be built there, along with being of a specific group (market demand takes priority over the focus), not to mention making exact goods that you need. And even if players put up with all of this and find creative ways to keep capitalists occupied, the basic problem of stimulating immigration by industrialization is impossible with capitalists around under the more liberal economic policies. Capitalists will just keep expanding factories each time they reach 70% of employment, which means craftsmen and clerks will stay in that state, rather than pack their things and leave to a different one, where a barely staffed factory is offering employment.

* TheScrappy: The Land Owner interest group in 3. They start out very powerful in many major countries such as Russia and Japan and they tend to be in favor of very inconvenient and conservative laws and tend to resist attempts to liberalize or enact laws that help develop the economy in a meaningful way, leading them to be very hated among the playerbase and most players will spend much of the earlygame trying to reduce the clout of the landowners so they can properly develop their country.

** Reverse of above happens in early versions of ''Victoria 3''. Troops by all means just teleport to their assigned front, which can reach such silly situations like Prussia simply landing 150+ regiments in a land-locked country somewhere in Central Asia, despite having no physical access to the place. Any sort of defence is based entirely on having a bigger army than the would-be invader, since even a technological edge can't provide sufficient defense. This was later changed as armies with generals assigned to defend a front will have increased defence, while military access was made more difficult as only the main attacker's and defender's territories and direct vassals/puppets grant military access [[note]]Patch 1.5x removed the ability to create vassals/puppets directly. Instead, the opposing country has to be made a protectorate first, then have their autonomy reduced twice to become a vassal/puppet.[[/note]].

* WinBackTheCrowd: Patch 1.5 in general, and especially the 1.5.10 fix to it, is seen as this for ''Victoria III''. With the ironing out of bugs and the introduction of local prices, reverse sways and reducing autonomy[[note]]which makes protectorates useful by changing them to dominions[[/note]] and reworking the [[BrokenBase base-breaking]] military system, general consensus is that this is the patch which the game should have launched with. And around the time 1.5 was delivered, foreign investments were announced to get a return from ''II'', addressing another common complain.

** The game also begins to suffer serious slowdown on most [=PCs=], thanks to the absurd numbers of pops it has to keep track of, which doesn't help. In ''3'', due to the way how [=POPs=] informations are stored[[note]]Along with the fact how assimilation mechanics work, leaving behind an enormous amount of a ''single person'' [=POPs=] that are simply impossible to assimilate (assimilation is always "half of current size", meaning 1 can't be assimilated), bloating the data for storage into absurdity[[/note]], the game flat-out ''refuses'' to work after 1890 or so due to inability to process the data. Thankfully, the situation has improved with subsequent patches.

** The entire economic model of ''Victoria 3'' is that of a command economy - player has to manage '''everything''' manually and directly. That despite the default economic model being ''called'' laissez faire and that the command economy itself is a late-game technology. Your capitalists won't build anything on their own, being the opposite end of the issue ''Victoria 2'' had with constant construction going on. In many ways, the game ended up being more obtuse and micro-heavy than the ancient at this point OG ''Victoria'', especially since the system goes as far as asking the player how ''each and every building operates and what sort of production model applies to it''[[note]]While there is a command to give to all buildings, this actually makes things ''harder'' to manage, as it might be beneficial for certain buildings to have different production models going[[/note]]. This was partially resolved when autonomous investments were added to the game.

* WinBackTheCrowd: Patch 1.510 is seen as this for ''Victoria III''. With the ironing out of bugs and the introduction of local prices, reverse sways and reducing autonomy[[note]]which makes protectorates useful by changing them to dominions[[/note]], general consensus is that this is the patch which the game should have launched with.

* WinBackTheCrowd: Patch 1.510 is seen as this for ''Victoria III''. With the ironing out of bugs and the introduction of local prices and reverse sways, general consensus is that this is the patch which the game should have launched with.

** Reverse of above happens in ''Victoria 3''. Troops by all means just teleport to their assigned front, which can reach such silly situations like Prussia simply landing 150+ regiments in a land-locked country somewhere in Central Asia, despite having no physical access to the place. Any sort of defence is based entirely on having a bigger army than the would-be invader, since even a technological edge can't provide sufficient defense.

** In ''III'', nations which start with Personal Unions almost always find ways to worsen relations with the junior partner and then try to bring said junior partner into the fold as a puppet. This is particularly more urgent for Great Britain, due to the union ending soon after the game starts and Hanover being involved in the German unification project. With two wars [[note]]one likely wrinkle is that Britain's rival France will jump in to support Hanover[[/note]], Hanover can become part of Great Britain proper, denying the formation of the North German Federation for Prussia and the formation of Germany for the German powers.
** Also in ''III'', there is exactly the same path each and every single nation has to take, no matter what: expand your construction sector to at least 30 points, and start building at the same time universities and additional construction buildings. Then, as the construction pool keeps increasing, keep adding additional universities, all in the same state, while increasing construction sector with surplus points. If by 1837 your country doesn't have at least lvl 11 university built[[note]]And if your literacy is anywhere above 15%, then the universities should be expanded even more, up to lvl 21, still stacked in a single state[[/note]], you completely and utterly harmed your nation's long-term growth - that even if you have to import wood and[=/=]or paper, lacking native production of either. Since universities directly contribute to the speed of research, and technologies can't be traded with other nations nor gained by any other means than researching them on your own[[note]]The spread of technologies already researched by other countries is also based on your innovation, thus making universities a necessity even if you rely on others to do the actual research[[/note]], the later you reach the literacy-based innovation cap of your country, the longer it will take to research new technologies. And if your country is backward enough to lack Academia technology, it's your first and foremost research goal. Everyone else has to focus on getting to Dialectics, an early game tech that increases efficiency of universities by 50%. This is all in stark contrast with the previous two games, where research was more automated and soft-locked behind a few technology gates that were accessible much later (not to mention the original ''Victoria'' allowed to simply trade technologies).

** Also in ''III'', there is exactly the same path each and every single nation has to take, no matter what: expand your construction sector to at least 30 points, and start building at the same time universities and additional construction buildings. Then, as the construction pool keeps increasing, keep adding additional universities, all in the same state, while increasing construction sector with surplus points. If by 1837 your country doesn't have at least lvl 11 university built[[note]]And if your literacy is anywhere above 15%, then the universities should be expanded even more, still stacked in a single state[[/note]], you completely and utterly harmed your nation's long-term growth - that even if you have to import wood and[=/=]or paper, lacking native production of either. Since universities directly contribute to the speed of research, and technologies can't be traded with other nations nor gained by any other means than researching them on your own[[note]]The spread of technologies already researched by other countries is also based on your innovation, thus making universities a necessity even if you rely on others to do the actual research[[/note]], the later you reach the literacy-based innovation cap of your country, the longer it will take to research new technologies. And if your country is backward enough to lack Academia technology, it's your first and foremost research goal. This is in stark contrast with the previous two games, where research was more automated and soft-locked behind a few technology gates that were accessible much later (not to mention the original ''Victoria'' allowed to simply trade technologies).

** Both ''2'' and ''3'' (even if less so) made it clear that politicians will only ever do anything to change the status quo when there is a direct threat to their own rule, looking only for their own office and seat in it. As long as people keep their heads low, the worst kind of abuse can fly. Conversely, this also had the equally accidental message that gradual, "one-step-at-the-time" changes and reforms are never done to truly change anything, but are just temporary concessions to placate the increasingly restless masses - and can be often revoked just as easily.

*** Sometimes, if the rot is too deeply rooted, it is better to have regime change and then try to reform from a fresh start.[[note]]This refers to the Ottomans, who have a much better chance of completing the Tanzimat journal entries if there is a revolution and the player switches side to play as the rebels.[[/note]]